Keeping a fresh, current, and relevant menu is more art than science. You need to consider seasonality, up-and-coming trends, specifics of the market you’re in, and the guests you’re serving — not to mention the appropriate cadence for changes.

For Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, a group that operates brands such as Ocean Prime, The Avenue, and The Pearl, the process is even more complex because they have restaurants from coast to coast. A guest visiting Ocean Prime should feel like they’re having a consistent experience whether they’re dining in the Beverly Hills location or the Indianapolis one, although the markets behave completely differently.

“Some concepts we change twice a year, in the spring and the fall, and others we change more for local reasons, or just to freshen up,” says Ryan Valentine, Director of Beverage for Cameron Mitchell Restaurants. “Everything is specific to each concept. For a concept to resonate with a guest it has to feel like it fits together — whether it’s more seasonal or more local.”

Ryan partners with Andrea Hoover, CMR’s Beverage Operations Manager, to develop new cocktails and beverage menus for all of the group’s many, varied concepts across the country. Here are some of their tips for building (and evolving) menus that work. [Read more…]

Restaurateurs today are bombarded with technology solutions. In a USHG Talks panel hosted by Union Square Hospitality Group group on Monday, the group’s Director of Marketing Lauren Hobbs joked, “You walk into some restaurants and it could be an Apple store with all of the iPads.” How does a busy operator navigate the proliferation of tech tools and drill down to what’s really important?

That was the crux of the conversation, titled “Today’s Technology for Tomorrow’s Business,” featuring Kelly Seeman, Industry Manager for Restaurants at Facebook; Damian Mogavero, author of The Underground Culinary Tour and founder of Avero; and Catherine Porter, OpenTable’s SVP of Strategy and Business Development. Over the course of the discussion, they explored the evolution of restaurant technology and how restaurants can leverage tools for business success — here are a few takeaways. [Read more…]

As proud sponsors of the Culinary Institute of America’s Worlds of Flavor conference, the OpenTable team spent last week up at the Greystone campus in Napa for a few days of discussion, demos, and culinary workshops. The theme of this year’s conference was “Casual By Design,” a nod to the proliferation of new casual concepts and formats being explored by some of the world’s best chefs and operators. Whether fine casual, upscale casual, street food or food halls, casual dining has never looked or tasted better — and we learned a few things about what’s giving this movement momentum. Here are seven tips and insights for success in today’s casual dining.

1. It’s not going away.

“Fine casual,” or whatever you want to call the intersection of quality and efficiency in food service, is here to stay, said Las Vegas restaurateur Elizabeth Blau. She insisted that casual was the reality of the restaurant industry today, between health care, real estate, and all of the other costs facing operators. But that’s an opportunity, too: “We can do something that’s a lot of fun and also make a profit.”

2. Show value in everything you do.

If you’re sourcing ingredients well and putting care into your operation, your prices will likely be higher than guests expect from a counter-service operation. At San Francisco’s Barzotto, Chef Michelle Minori and her team make everything in house in an open kitchen, using the best ingredients they can find. Their challenge is to control everything so they can keep price points lower, and actually over-deliver on expectations.

Joe Hargrave of Tacolicious explained the quality-efficiency balance colorfully: “Just because George Harrison didn’t have huge guitar riffs doesn’t mean he didn’t know how.” In other words, it’s not about showing off, it’s about doing what you do well.

3. Be willing to evolve.

Barzotto opened with a simple menu of five pastas. Sounds streamlined, right? But their sophisticated guests, especially their regulars, were getting bored. Minori shifted to a format where now 70% of her menu showcases consistent favorites, while the rest changes seasonally so customers can come back and try new things. [Read more…]

This afternoon, the 19th annual Worlds of Flavor conference kicks off at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley, welcoming more than 60 guest chefs and other culinary experts around the country to explore the world cuisines shaping the restaurant industry. As sponsors of the event, we at OpenTable are thrilled to be part of the conversation around food cultures, flavor trends, and Americans’ ever-changing palates.

The theme for the 2017 program is “Casual by Design,” a nod to the many ways in which restaurants are evolving to meet the needs and expectations of the guests they serve: fast casual, upscale casual, street food, food halls, delivery services, and much, much more. Under the umbrella of what Worlds of Flavor dubs “next-generation casual,” all of these formats are driving the democratization of food, with accessibility and scale valued over exclusivity and acclaim. Without sacrificing quality, some of the country’s best chefs and restaurateurs are delving into the casual service, bolstered by the public’s enthusiasm around world cuisines from Asia to Latin America.

Starting today at 3 p.m. PT, you can follow along with the webcast below to hear sessions and seminars from the main stage. Watch, listen, learn, and get inspired!

It’s no secret that the restaurant industry is facing one of the worst labor shortages in history. Couple that with the fact that restaurants are the largest employer of immigrants, Muslims, and LGBTQ individuals — all vulnerable populations today — and staffing gets a lot more challenging.

That tension is part of the inspiration behind Sanctuary Restaurants, an organization founded to stand up for the rights of restaurant workers, owners, and consumers. We spoke with Saru Jayaraman, Executive Director and Co-founder of Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United, one of the groups that helped launch the Sanctuary Restaurants movement. Here, she shares the inspiration behind the project and how owners and operators can serve their employees and communities.

Tell us the story behind Sanctuary Restaurants. What spurred the creation of it?

Even before this election, a lot of our industry partners were reporting that this is the worst labor shortage they’ve seen. When the election happened and there was all the rhetoric of hate — discriminatory policies against immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ individuals, women — our employer partners became very concerned that what was already a difficult situation for them, in which they had a hard time hiring and retaining workers, was going to become even more difficult.

We had some employers report that workers were terrified to even show up for work, there was tension and fighting among staff, workers were being harassed by customers who felt empowered by the rhetoric. Our employer leaders came together and decided to write an open letter to President Trump saying, business owner to business owner, please don’t make this more difficult for us. We don’t need a hostile environment for all the most vulnerable workers in our industry.

Why is the restaurant industry specifically affected?

We are the largest employer of every one of those vulnerable populations — of immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ individuals — everybody. To have an industry that’s already going through this shortage now facing incredible tension among these vulnerable workers, this is not what we need. What we need is a path to citizenship for these workers, our employees.

They wrote the letter and, to make it more visible, came up collectively with the term Sanctuary Restaurants. The motto is “a place at the table for everyone.” As a Sanctuary Restaurant, they are a community space that is open to every kind of worker and every kind of customer. They would not tolerate any kind of discrimination based on anyone’s identity, whether it’s their political beliefs or religious/ethnic identity, or their status as an immigrant.

How are Sanctuary Restaurants identified?

First they created signs and stickers, but we also wanted a way to support workers as well. We partnered with Presente.org, which is the largest Latinx online organization in the United States. They helped us create a web platform and a mobile texting system in which workers can text into a number to get rapid response support should anything happen in a restaurant, any kind of discrimination or harassment emergency.

Workers, consumers, and employers can all join. Employers and workers who join are invited to join legal presentations and webinars where they learn their rights and best practices for how to deal with these issues. Consumers are given cards that they can hand out to their favorite restaurant owners or managers. And they can hand out cards to workers with the mobile text number. Consumers can be one of best tools to grow this, and the employers involved feel like it’s very important to grow it so that it really begins to have some power and voice.

What kind of engagement have you seen from those groups?

Since we launched the program in early January more than 400 restaurants have signed on, about 1,000 workers, and about 15,000 consumers. It’s been rapid growth, with a lot of press attention and a lot of support from the industry.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised that so many restaurateurs are being so courageous in standing up and saying, we need a safe, welcoming environment for all these people because we rely on all of these people — and because we care about them. They are our families and communities.

What stories are you hearing from restaurants about what workers are facing?

There have been some raids. We have seen some instances of consumers feeling empowered to say harassing, discriminatory things to workers or employers. We’ve seen some employers who are not part of the program retaliate against workers for participating in the Day Without Immigrant marches and strikes.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen harassments come from co-workers, from consumers, and in other instances, employers. We’ve also seen a lot of employers who see the level of fear and division in their own restaurant. One employer in New York said to me, “It really feels like 9/11 all over again.” Nobody’s eating out, and people feel scared — to be in public places in some cases, to be around other people. It’s really about trying to create a sanctuary space in restaurants: this is a safe place anybody can come to and enjoy themselves and be treated with hospitality, which is what our industry is really about.

What do restaurants need to know about protecting their workers right now? Any tips?

Being in a collective space is the safest place. Joining something like Sanctuary Restaurants, being with other employers who are concerned about the same things, being able to learn from one another about what’s happening.

One of the best things about Sanctuary Restaurants is that there is an army of legal defense: so many attorneys right now that are gearing up to support immigrants and Muslims, which is great. There is safety in numbers, safety in knowing what’s happening in our industry in other parts of country, and hearing from lawyers with industry expertise who can provide that kind of support.

For example, we had employers in one case who were dealing with some hateful customers, and another from Maine said, here’s an email I sent to customers and how I dealt with it. It was a real learning moment for a lot of employers in other parts of the country for how they could deal with similar situations. That’s the benefit of an industry-specific group. Our group is of employers who care deeply about their workers’ well-being, who want to see them survive and thrive. They think, “We do better when they do better.”